The Stars and Stripes
by EmrysTheMerlin
Summary: Stephanie Rodgers was the subject of a government experiment in the 1940's, with her new powers and fighting spirit she became Captain America. But she died in the fight against the Red Skull. Seventy years later she wakes up in a world that's not her own. Fem! Captain America. Series of One Shots.
1. Nightmares

**Author's Note: So I saw Age of Ultron. No spoilers but it was amazing! But I went in costume, of course, as Fem! Captain America. Of course that got me thinking about that so here goes. This one's going to be a lot like a few of my other fem stories in the sense that it's a series of one and two shots. This one is set during the Avengers. For convenience I have bended Peggy into Patrick though I debated that for days. I own nothing.**

Nightmares

The first thing Stephanie remembered after the crash was not the room S.H.E.I.L.D. had tried to trick her with. No she had been dreaming while she was asleep from the ice. She couldn't remember exactly what she had been dreaming of when she woke up but somehow it didn't seem that important at the time. Bucky had been there, Patrick had been in it too. The other commandos had been involved somehow but the details were fuzzy. Figuring out what had happened was more important really, at the time. But now she didn't want to sleep anymore.

Fury had checked up on her a few times to see how she was settling in and to give her something that belonged to her. His father had been one of her Howling Commandos, Jack Fury had been a good man and had raised a good son. Jack had been in position of her motorcycle at the end of the war and had kept it in good repair and passed it down to his eldest son when he had passed away. Nick had passed it back to her when she had thawed out. She had taken to driving around at night, she wasn't really worried about waking up the city that never sleeps.

She was really more concerned with escaping the nightmares. They hadn't stopped since she woke up. Every time she closed her eyes she watched Bucky fall from the train again and again, the commandos falling one by one to war or just the unrelenting pull of time. Patrick was the only person she knew who was still alive but he had what Nick called Alzheimer's. He had explained it as a kind of dementia. Whatever word they used it meant that he wouldn't recognize her for very long, if at all. She hadn't been able to work up the nerve to go see him yet. She was afraid it would just fuel the nightmares.

Beating on a punching bag helped sometimes but not tonight. She pulled up to her new gym. It was S.H.E.I.L.D. owned so she had been given keys to get in whenever she wanted. She pulled out a few punching bags and lined them up carefully, she had always been very organized when stressed. It helped in combat. She hung one of the bags and pulled her hair up into a high ponytail just like it had been that day, the day she died. Her helmet was designed to accommodate that hairstyle. Had been designed. She wrapped her hands trying not to think about her last fight at the Hydra base. She couldn't keep it out of her head though. The voices kept echoing through her mind as she made her way through the first bag and then the second, then a third. As she beat on the fifth bag the last few moments of her time, as she now thought of it, flashed in front of her eyes as the bag went flying across the room.

"Trouble sleeping?" The familiar voice rang through the room and Stephanie shook her head slightly. She wasn't even surprised at this point that Nick Fury could sneak up on her.

"I slept for seventy years sir. I think that's enough for now, don't you?" Fury nodded slightly. Stephanie put up the next punching bag from her lineup.

"Then you should be out celebrating. Seeing the world." She turned away from him and began to unwind the wrap from around her hands.

"I went under the world was at war. I wake up, they tell me we won. They didn't say what we lost."Fury nodded.

"We've made some mistakes along the way, some very recently." Stephanie brushed stray strands of bright blonde hair out of her face and looked him up and down. He had a file in his hand.

"You here with a mission, sir? Trying to get me back into the world?" Fury held out the file.

"Trying to save it." Stephanie took the file and flipped it open. The first thing that caught her eye was a picture of the cube.

"Hydra's secret weapon." She hadn't known it had survived this long. She raised an eyebrow at Fury as she sat down on one of the benches.

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean while he was looking for you. He thought what we think. The tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs." Stephanie nodded and handed Fury back his file.

"So who took it from you?" Fury took the file and looked down at it absently with his one good eye.

"He's called Loki. He's… not from around here. There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on, if you're interested. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know." Stephanie shook her head as she stood and walked over to the lineup of punching bags.

"I slept in ice for seventy years and woke up in a future with things I didn't know were possible. At this point I doubt anything would surprise me." Fury smiled slightly.

"Ten bucks says you're wrong." Stephanie nodded slightly as she picked up one of the bags as if it weighed no more than a feather.

"You're on sir." She began to walk towards the exit as Fury continued to speak.

"There's a debriefing packet waiting for you back at your apartment. Is there anything you can tell us about the tesseract that we ought to know now?" Stephanie nodded slightly.

"Yeah, you should have left it in the ocean."


	2. Like Father

**Author's Note: Ok I ship stony pretty hard. I haven't quite gotten there in any of my other stories but here goes. This is how the fight in Stuttgart could have gone. I own nothing.**

Like Father

"You know last time I was in Germany and saw standing above everyone else, we ended up disagreeing." The man in the ridiculous horned helmet smiled as he pulled himself to his feet.

"The soldier, the woman out of time." Stephanie shook her head as she heard the jet approaching.

"I'm not the one who's out of time." Natasha activated the gun on the jet and aimed at Loki.

"Loki drop the weapon and stand down!" The weapon in Loki's hand fired a blast like a hydra weapon. Natasha just managed to avoid it as Stephanie threw her shield and hit him full on. It bounced and she caught it as she ran up to him and punched him in the face. He reeled slightly before sweeping his scepter around to smack into her side. She blocked and he retaliated smacking her shield away the end of his scepter. She went flying as her shield sailed the other way. She flipped to her feet and dodged to the left as Loki fired again. She flipped over him and came down behind him delivering a heavy blow to his back sending him sprawling. He growled and pulled himself up. She delivered another blow to his side but he caught her foot with one hand and threw her. She began to pull herself up and felt the butt of the spear against her helmet.

"Kneel!" She really didn't like him.

"Not today!" She knocked the spear off her head and out of his hand in one swift movement, using the momentum to dive for her shield at the same time as Loki snatched back up his weapon. He blasted her shield again and sent her flying across the square again she landed on her back. Loki stood over her the spear end of the pointed down towards her heart.

"You were almost a worthy opponent soldier. Almost." Suddenly there was music blasting from the jet. Loki paused and looked up for a split second but that was all Stephanie needed. She rolled out of the way as Loki brought down the scepter to stab into the pavement where her chest had been moments before. He looked up confused only for her knee to connect with his face sending him stumbling. Then a blast of light knocked him off his feet. Within seconds Iron Man landed in front of Loki, whose nose was bleeding quite a lot. She had broken it when she had kneed him there, that much was clear. Iron Man held his arm out as several missiles took aim at Loki.

"Make your move reindeer games." Loki slowly raised his hands, his armor and helmet melting away.

"Good move." Stephanie snatched up her shield and stepped up beside the son of one of her friends. She and Howard hadn't gotten along much to start with but they had developed a mutual respect for each other by the end. She had even learned that he had spent several years out in the arctic just looking for her. But she had no idea what the son of renowned playboy, alcoholic Howard Stark would be like.

"Mr. Stark." She acknowledged him with a nod. He nodded as well though it was small almost hesitant.

"Captain Rodgers." It was short and a tiny bit terse. They loaded Loki up into the ship and stood by the pilot's seat in awkward silence. Iron man removed his helmet revealing an attractive man in his mid twenties, maybe early thirties. Stephanie decided she too could remove her mask since he had taken that step first. She pulled it off and saw Tony eyeing her out of the corner of her eye.

"Yes?" He grinned slightly.

"Oh nothing. Just kinda shocked that you're actually pretty under there." Stephanie raised an eyebrow at him, she honestly couldn't tell if he was flirting or not. But in time she would learn that it was almost impossible to explain anything a Stark ever did. Like father like son.


End file.
